Budget Travel How to See the World Without Breaking the Bank
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - I'm gonna just start off asking
00:00:07.020 | what you think the biggest misconception
00:00:08.700 | people have about travel is.
00:00:10.660 | - I mean, I think the obvious answer, at least to me,
00:00:12.620 | is that people think it's expensive.
00:00:15.640 | I think less so now because so much is on social media
00:00:21.340 | and there's so many blogs and it's talked about.
00:00:25.700 | But I still think the vast majority of people will say,
00:00:30.700 | well, they don't really have time to travel.
00:00:34.560 | But if you did, there's always time,
00:00:38.260 | but then they're like, oh, I just can't afford it.
00:00:41.400 | Because people think, oh, plane tickets are expensive,
00:00:45.200 | hotels, Airbnb, they just, they see all these commercials
00:00:49.360 | and this glamorized version of travel on social media
00:00:52.880 | and they just think, well, that's pricey.
00:00:55.680 | Travel is a luxury item, right?
00:00:58.060 | It's not a must-have thing.
00:01:01.000 | It's something you do to relax, to take a break.
00:01:06.000 | And so there's this perception that this is expensive
00:01:11.760 | when it doesn't have to be because you always can go over
00:01:16.800 | to wherever you're going and just do the local things
00:01:20.640 | and the local things cost a non-touristy price.
00:01:24.800 | And so I think if you ask people like,
00:01:29.560 | well, how much do you spend in your own life?
00:01:31.760 | People have these very way off estimates.
00:01:37.000 | They usually have like a low, like they're on the lower end.
00:01:42.000 | But if you get people to record all their expenses,
00:01:45.000 | even like, oh, I bought a water bottle,
00:01:47.220 | that's a couple bucks, right?
00:01:49.640 | Yeah, but you don't think of it.
00:01:51.960 | People actually spend a lot more than they think they do.
00:01:55.800 | And then when you balance that versus the price of travel,
00:01:58.000 | it's oftentimes cheaper.
00:02:00.360 | - Yeah, I mean, I live in the Bay Area.
00:02:01.600 | So anywhere in the world I would go has to be probably
00:02:04.720 | cheaper except maybe Tokyo or a few cities.
00:02:08.240 | So life other places is cheaper.
00:02:11.400 | And I experienced this actually,
00:02:14.400 | it was probably almost 15 years ago.
00:02:17.000 | We traveled for eight months
00:02:18.440 | and we rented our place out at home.
00:02:20.720 | And we broke even or even kind of came out slightly ahead
00:02:25.280 | because it turns out we were spending more to live
00:02:27.720 | in the Bay Area than we were spending to travel.
00:02:29.960 | But I wanna get into some of those costs,
00:02:32.600 | some of the ways you save money,
00:02:33.920 | some of the tactics you have.
00:02:35.600 | But I kind of wanna get started
00:02:37.560 | and just ask how travel has changed for you.
00:02:40.560 | I know you have been in this industry for longer than many.
00:02:44.360 | And by industry, I mean writing
00:02:46.240 | and sharing your travels online.
00:02:48.880 | You wrote a memoir about what you've learned
00:02:50.920 | after being a nomad for a decade.
00:02:54.040 | How have things evolved for you personally
00:02:56.400 | and in the industry?
00:02:58.280 | - Yeah, I started this when I was 25.
00:03:00.880 | I started traveling the world.
00:03:01.920 | So I'm 42 this year.
00:03:04.440 | And so obviously my days of cheap meals
00:03:09.360 | and 12 bed hostel dorms is long gone.
00:03:14.120 | I like nice food.
00:03:17.160 | I, since I work when I travel,
00:03:19.680 | having a place to work is really important.
00:03:22.360 | Having, getting a lot of good sleep is important.
00:03:26.240 | So I tend to get my own room, hotels.
00:03:29.440 | I take a lot more paid walking tours or food tours.
00:03:33.800 | And so for me, the biggest thing is that
00:03:37.680 | my accommodation is a lot nicer.
00:03:40.440 | I take more paid activities.
00:03:42.400 | Whereas when I was 25, it was all about the free stuff,
00:03:46.160 | the hostel dorms, cooking your own meals.
00:03:49.280 | I still consider myself a backpacker, a budget traveler.
00:03:55.440 | You know, I take public transportation.
00:03:59.160 | I love street food.
00:04:01.000 | I still do parks and local things
00:04:05.800 | and go to the markets and all that jazz.
00:04:09.560 | I'm not a resort guy.
00:04:12.120 | I don't really do luxury.
00:04:13.320 | I mean, it's nice, but it feels hard isolating to me.
00:04:16.440 | So that's the biggest thing that's for me has changed.
00:04:20.320 | It's sort of probably the nicer days.
00:04:23.640 | And then how has travel changed?
00:04:25.480 | I think travel has become a lot more accessible
00:04:27.760 | than when I started traveling.
00:04:30.720 | Both the ability to do it
00:04:32.600 | and the ability to find information.
00:04:35.040 | You know, when I started traveling,
00:04:37.080 | the internet was just sort of taking off
00:04:39.560 | as a means of like finding information in the sense
00:04:43.440 | that you had like forums and like blogs
00:04:46.680 | and all these places you can go to ask questions
00:04:48.720 | about where do I find this hostel?
00:04:51.160 | How do I do this thing?
00:04:52.440 | And so I was still primarily using guidebooks
00:04:56.880 | as well as just asking around.
00:04:59.440 | But between social media and the advent of so many blogs,
00:05:03.920 | there's nothing you can't learn
00:05:07.680 | with a quick Google search, right?
00:05:09.200 | There's no hidden restaurant, there's no hidden town.
00:05:13.200 | Like, oh, have you been?
00:05:14.040 | Yeah, there are places that are more well-known
00:05:17.400 | than anywhere else,
00:05:20.280 | but there's no place that's unknown
00:05:22.040 | in the age of the internet.
00:05:24.840 | Somebody has been there
00:05:25.960 | and they posted an Instagram from there.
00:05:28.560 | No matter like what little town it is,
00:05:30.920 | no matter where it is.
00:05:32.360 | And so that is really great
00:05:34.360 | because it demystifies a lot of the travel experience.
00:05:39.400 | It allows people to become more comfortable with going,
00:05:44.000 | right?
00:05:44.840 | It's not so much of like you're going into the unknown.
00:05:47.160 | It's like, oh, okay, I've heard of this place,
00:05:49.240 | I've heard of this thing, so maybe I'll go there.
00:05:52.400 | Even if you're like so scared
00:05:54.280 | 'cause you're going to a place you've never been,
00:05:56.480 | it's no longer like this like fog out there.
00:06:00.240 | - Yeah.
00:06:01.080 | - And then the advent of all these budget airlines
00:06:03.360 | and everything has made it just a lot cheaper
00:06:05.240 | for people to travel.
00:06:07.200 | - Yeah, I mean, sometimes one of the ways
00:06:08.600 | that I get inspiration is I'll just search on YouTube
00:06:10.800 | and it's okay, well, what's this place like?
00:06:13.000 | It's like, here's a video of a person
00:06:14.000 | walking down the street
00:06:14.960 | and you can get a really visceral feeling
00:06:18.600 | for what it's like to be there.
00:06:19.680 | And I remember when we first went to South and East Africa,
00:06:24.120 | I had this one brat travel guide that was from 1998
00:06:27.880 | because it was like the only one that was,
00:06:29.920 | we were traveling for long enough
00:06:31.080 | that I couldn't bring a book for each country.
00:06:33.400 | So I was like, this was the one.
00:06:35.600 | It's like, you don't get a lot of feeling
00:06:37.000 | about what you're about to embark on there.
00:06:38.640 | It was more of a directory.
00:06:40.480 | - Yeah, guidebooks, even in the best of times
00:06:43.000 | are usually a year and a half behind what's going on.
00:06:47.160 | - Yep.
00:06:48.000 | - I never have used guidebooks as a price guide,
00:06:51.120 | just more of a rough guide.
00:06:52.760 | - Yes, yeah, yeah.
00:06:54.120 | I think they're great about here's the part of town
00:06:56.440 | to look for, here's some ideas of how transportation works.
00:07:00.560 | But I'm curious, you said now that you've kind of
00:07:04.080 | gotten older, have done this a while,
00:07:05.560 | your digs have gone up, you wrote the book,
00:07:08.480 | people have referenced it in many ways
00:07:10.840 | about being like the guide for backpacking
00:07:13.600 | about traveling the world on $50 a day.
00:07:16.440 | Do you think that still holds both in today's world,
00:07:19.720 | inflation pandemic and as people age
00:07:22.640 | and wanna experience travel, not in a hostel with 12 beds?
00:07:27.200 | - Yes and no.
00:07:28.040 | I mean, that book is never about the number.
00:07:29.640 | A lot of people would get caught up on that,
00:07:31.800 | like, oh, 50 bucks, good luck doing your way on 50 bucks.
00:07:36.800 | I mean, you're traveling the world on $50 a day.
00:07:40.200 | So it's a daily average.
00:07:41.640 | Some places, totally, especially post COVID, strong dollar,
00:07:48.040 | India is still very cheap.
00:07:51.040 | Parts of Central America, Southeast Asia,
00:07:57.040 | Eastern Europe, still very cheap.
00:07:59.720 | But your average place for a hostel in Western Europe
00:08:04.720 | is probably 30 euros now a night.
00:08:10.080 | So it's very rare to see door beds, 10 euros, 15 euros.
00:08:14.920 | They're still out there, but they're harder to find
00:08:18.440 | and they're less common.
00:08:19.640 | And the beds are probably gonna be like 20 beds.
00:08:23.080 | So if I, and I am going to redo this book
00:08:27.680 | probably for a post COVID, post inflation world,
00:08:30.760 | I'd probably up it to like a 65, $70 a day average.
00:08:35.280 | If you're doing the quintessential round the world trip,
00:08:41.080 | you know, go to Europe, Southeast Asia,
00:08:44.640 | Australia, New Zealand, South and Central America.
00:08:47.560 | Yeah, and if you're coming from the US,
00:08:52.400 | that's going to be even better
00:08:56.840 | because the US dollar is so strong right now.
00:08:59.240 | Will that stay?
00:09:01.400 | Who knows?
00:09:02.240 | When I planned my original trip around the world,
00:09:06.280 | I remember it was one US dollar got you $1.30 Australian.
00:09:11.280 | So that's what my budget was based off of.
00:09:14.440 | And by the time I got there, it was one-to-one.
00:09:17.080 | So I lost 30% of my budget because of that.
00:09:22.080 | So like I had to readjust everything.
00:09:26.760 | So, you know, I mean, it's less about the number
00:09:30.400 | and more about the style, like the tips, the tricks.
00:09:34.880 | If you're just looking for ways to travel cheap,
00:09:37.880 | forget about the number,
00:09:39.160 | just use the strategies in the book.
00:09:41.560 | - Okay, so let's talk about some of those strategies
00:09:44.520 | 'cause I liked how you actually broke it down.
00:09:46.720 | It wasn't just, there are a bunch of strategies,
00:09:48.920 | go have a great trip.
00:09:49.760 | It's here's what you specifically need to know.
00:09:52.200 | So how would you walk someone through
00:09:54.840 | the high level of planning a trip like this
00:09:58.000 | with the goal to do it on a budget?
00:10:00.280 | What are the kind of key strategies
00:10:02.520 | you think people need to follow?
00:10:04.040 | - I think the biggest thing for people is one, travel slow.
00:10:07.480 | The more you can sort of spread out your costs,
00:10:10.120 | the better it will be.
00:10:11.280 | If you're moving around a lot,
00:10:13.720 | you're gonna have high transportation costs
00:10:15.480 | and that really can eat into a lot of people's budgets.
00:10:18.240 | But the big thing is just really being flexible
00:10:23.320 | because if you can wait for that deal to come,
00:10:26.240 | then you're not tied into like,
00:10:27.560 | I have to get this flight on this day to this destination.
00:10:31.240 | And so one of the benefits of long-term travel
00:10:35.040 | is that you're in no rush to do anything.
00:10:37.120 | You can wait for that flight deal, that hotel deal,
00:10:40.040 | or you can find a flight deal or a hotel deal
00:10:42.320 | and be like, that's where we're going next
00:10:43.840 | because that's where it's cheapest.
00:10:45.720 | And so big picture, always be flexible.
00:10:50.640 | Second big picture thing is to travel like you live.
00:10:54.680 | You in your daily life, cook food,
00:10:58.800 | you don't eat expensive food all the time, restaurants,
00:11:02.100 | you look for free activities,
00:11:04.440 | you take public transportation, you go for walks.
00:11:06.940 | Do the same when you're traveling.
00:11:10.800 | If you really wanna get a taste of local life,
00:11:13.480 | go to the local farmer's market,
00:11:15.280 | go take the train or the bus,
00:11:18.800 | go for a walk, sit in a park.
00:11:20.920 | Travel doesn't always have to be about doing things.
00:11:23.640 | It can be more about just existing in a place
00:11:26.600 | and soaking up the vibe.
00:11:29.120 | And so if you travel like you live,
00:11:32.600 | you're gonna end up doing all the things that locals do
00:11:35.320 | because what people do in Berlin
00:11:39.720 | isn't different than what people do in the Bay Area
00:11:41.920 | or Austin.
00:11:43.440 | Everyone gets up and goes to work and takes the train
00:11:45.680 | and goes grocery shopping
00:11:47.400 | and lives their day-to-day life and then walks.
00:11:50.560 | Maybe it's just by the river,
00:11:53.040 | they do something, sit in the park.